Originally I didn't have any intention of going to see The Simpsons Movie... I figured it was too little too late... if it had come out ten years ago, sure... now, not so much.

But then both Tom and Brenton said how much they enjoyed it, and all the other movies I was considering seeing tonight were either not playing at a reasonable time, or not playing at our regular cinema at all... or, to be honest, I'd just lost interest in seeing them.

So Simpsons it turned out to be.

I will say that I was pleasantly surprised... from the opening gag where Homer turns to the screen and basically makes fun of the whole audience because they were "paying for something they could have seen for free on teevee" all the way through to the random little pop-up jokes during the credits (and stay ALL the way to the end, for no other reason than there are some cute bits).

Basically if you took various selected episodes of the teevee show and tweaked some bits of plot here and there, then you basically have the movie... it's not like it's going to win a Nobel Prize for Literature or anything, but it's amusing and there are a few nice call-backs to things from the series. Actually, I would imagine, the more of a fan of the show you are the more things you will recognise. I got a fair few of them, but I'm sure there were more.

Some of the CGI backgrounds and bits and pieces were quite stunning, particularly the panorama of Alaska (although I did have some problems with "flat trees" during one of the early car shots)... and they totally make use of as much of the wide screen format as they possibly can, giving you more animated bang for your buck.

The downside to this movie as with a lot of comedy movies is that they show the trailer over and over and over and over and over and over again, so by the time you get to the movie, there are certain lines and scenes that you know, so the jokes aren't as funny as they might have been if you hadn't already seen them six billion times.

Having said that there were still things that were very, very funny... I don't want to give anything away (especially given my comment above), but part of Bart's skateboarding scene towards the beginning of the movie really, really cracked me up.

And of course, then there's the Spider-Pig theme song (even if it has been thrashed to death in the trailer)...

Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig. / Does whatever a Spider-Pig does. / Can he swing / from a web? / No he can't, / cause he's a pig. / Look out! / He is the Spider-Pig!

I gotta say though, I really loved the choral operatic version that shows up during the closing credits!

"I'm the ditzy blonde country bumpkin with the bogan accent"- Aleisha on self reflection

My god... talk about your close run things... the closest Australian Big Brother Finale ever, with quite literally 2% difference (and, according to Gretel, less than 500 votes) between them.

From twelve Original Housemates, four Intruders, four White Room Wildcards, two Public Vote Wildcards, a Golden Key Winner, Mr X and a very brief visit from an Australian Idol Judge Special Guest (making 25 in all... or 24 official Housemates)... it all came down to tonight...

Actually, I have to say, when they revealed what percentages the two finalists were sitting on at the beginning of the night, it did seem like a forgone conclusion that Aleisha would win... but I have to say, I honestly didn't know what the result would be when it came to crunch time and I was gripping my remote (actually I think I tensed just about everything while Gretel was doing the long drawn out pause) and hoping and wishing it would end with Zach as the winner... but I should have known... my BB Winner Curse holds true... not once has my preferred winner actually taken it out!

And once again I do feel all flat and weird now that it's over... the Post BB Sad... although for whatever reason it doesn't seem as bad as in previous years.

Whether its because I liked this year's crop of Housemates less overall, or because they just spent so much time, as Travis put it, "dog paddling" during the show tonight because the result was supposedly too close to call, I dunno. But really, one of these years they are actually going to just say "yes, the Final Eviction Show will run until at least 10pm" instead of saying "Oh, no... it will all be over by 9:15".... pffffffffft... like buggery.

Two things before I go any further... first off, where the hell was Intruder Laura? She wasn't around at all... and they didn't even mention it, they showed the video package of her time in the house, but didn't interview her or mention it... they just skipped right over the fact that she was absent (and I'm guessing that Demet actually filled in her part during the actually rather amusing Pantomime that the Housemates did since she was the only Housemate who did double duty during it)... very strange and very interesting... I'm sure the reason will surface sometime within the next few days, I'm just interested to know what it is.

The second thing... I LOVE Aleisha's Mum! Seriously, she's a groovy lady... and the fact that she was really sweet to Zach both during the "Loved Ones" visit during the Finale, and the fact that she was the first person to hug Zach after Aleisha was announced as the winner. One classy lady!

And how sweet was Zach with his folks... okay, he fell apart and had a big girly cry... but, to use the phrase I've been overusing of late... "Awwwww BLESS!"

As far as the Finale itself went... I preferred last year's format... with all the previous Housemates coming into the House again all glammed up and whatnot... and again I always prefer it when they announce the winner in the House rather than on stage, but I guess since all the little Counting Gnomes were still counting the votes they had to do something... otherwise the show would STILL be going on.

That was one of the downsides to this year's Finale actually. They just plain ran out of material... wouldn't you think they would have planned SOMETHING "just in case"... but no, they ended up just filling in dead air time really. When they have to resort to sending Mike Goldman out into the crowd to talk to the punters you know that a producer somewhere is banging their head on a tabletop somewhere and weeping.

And alas the "Pink Vote" didn't manage to get a gay Housemate across the line... we did manage to get a step closer though... third to last Housemate last year, runner up this year... maybe next year there will be a gay Housemate or Intruder who actually wins.

So, as they hang the last two nametags on the Housemate Graveyard and turn off the lights for another year, congrats Aleisha and enjoy your $450,000!

And I thought the mist/fog on Saturday morning was something... when I walked out of the door for my walk today I couldn't actually see either end of my street and for pretty much my whole walk I couldn't see further than a few hundred metres in front of me.

I don't even know why, but I kept being surprised by how much I couldn't see... first the end of the street, then I couldn't see the length of Wellington Square... but then I got to Montefiore Hill (the photo on the left up the top)... now normally you see the whole city laid out before you... first trees, then Adelaide Oval, then the city and the Hills beyond... today, it was just a big white blank... very, very trippy...

In fact, it wasn't until I started walking down the hill that I could even see the trees at the bottom... looming slowly out of the whiteness like something out of a fairy story.

Then, when I got to the Torrens, I could only just see across it... in fact the shot with the swans was taken not far away from the spot that I took the Torrens panorama shot late last year.

Like I said the last time we had big major fog like this, I love it because it makes everything look so unreal...and because it happens so rarely here.

It even smells unreal... like when you walk into your bathroom when the hot shower is running and it's that "taste" of wet air... but this was cold instead of hot.

Sadly it's all lifted now, although the day doesn't look like it's going to get much brighter than "grey"... at least for now.

I have to say I was both surprised and, well, not really surprised at the results of tonight's Big Brother final eviction...

I know back when there were still six Housemates I'd kind of put my money on Billy... but once there were only four left I honestly couldn't pick who was going to go tonight. I went back and forth about who was in and who was out and who the final two were... and just about any permutation looked like it could be a viable option. As the week went on, in the back of my mind I did kind of think it was going to be Billy first up, but while I'd entertained the idea of the Gay Guy/Country Girl finale, I actually didn't think it was going to happen.

As far as I know this is the first time in Australian BB history that an Intruder has made it to the final two (and, from what I read somewhere that if he wins he will be the first ever intruder to win a Big Brother series worldwide)... and the first time a gay Housemate of either gender had reached this point (although David from last year did make it to the final four). So even if Corset Queen Zach doesn't win tomorrow, he still makes the "record books". And if he does, well, then the gayest gay Housemate ever in the history of the show becomes the winner of BB07.

Given the audience reaction to Zach during tonight's show (they screamed for him much longer while Gretel was talking to the Housemates than to any of the other three) he may just take it out too... I still hold to what I said about the final six... I think Aleisha will end up as the runner up... but then what the hell do I know, the last three seasons the person I've wanted to win always comes in second (Chrissy, Tim and Camilla respectively).

So here's to "Zach Slap and Aleisha Tickle" (together they are "Slap and Tickle")... I have no idea who's going to win, but whoever it is, it's nice to see Australia getting behind a "different kind of winner".

PS: I noticed that two of my Aussie blogmates (Tom and Euphoric) have both posted very similar "Save Zach" posts... I wonder if there's enough power in the gay Aussie blogosphere to have the first gay Aussie BB winner...

It's been a grey old day today... starting with foggy drizzly mist (it was more like really fine rain that wasn't actually falling than either rain or ground fog) first thing this morning right through to the pretty featurless grey that's going on at the moment. Okay, there was some sun around this afternoon...

We mostly wandered about doing Random Shopping today... partly because I wanted a couple of new storage jars and a casserole dish somewhere between the small oval shape and the MASSIVE square one I already have.

Ended up getting a couple of jars, but as is always the way with these things, they're actually a little on the too big side, and since I cleaned out my cupboards after we got back from doing everything, I'm not actually sure that I need said jars anymore. As far as the casserole dish goes, Ma is going to dig through the ones she has and see what comes up before we go finding something new (plus I couldn't make my mind up about shape, size or material, which never helps).

After that we ducked into Borders in town to make use of the discount voucher I had... and actually picked up a book I hadn't seen or heard of before, The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde which sounds like it could be interesting.

Then it was off to the Haighs Factory/Visitors Centre for their 1pm tour. We'd actually thought about going along last week, but they do say that "bookings are essential" and when we called they were all booked up for the day... so I remembered to call during the week and make a booking (and by the time I did there was only one of the tours still available). It was okay as these things go... although I did learn something interesting... I said way back when that while Haighs was my favourite brand of chocolate, Lindt comes a close second (or third, depending on the day)... and it turns out that when the third generation of the Haighs wanted to learn how to make chocolate he wrote to ten different Swiss chocolatiers asking them to teach him how to make chocolate... turns out the only one who said they would teach him was the Lindt family! Makes sense that they would be in my top two really.

The only downside to the whole chocolate factory tour thing was that they really don't have that many staff working on a Saturday, so there wasn't much to watch going on in the factory. On the plus side, they do give you some free chocolate tastings, so you can't really complain. But I still would probably go along on a weekday next time.

That was about it really... we bought far too much chocolate once we were done, then came back here and I cleaned out my cupboards, threw some stuff away, shifted other stuff to smaller containers, blah blah blah.

Well, there's been a distinct lack of clear blue sky today, but these shots from last weekend are a nice reminder of somewhat better weather. The top shot of these three is my favourite... it's actually a piece of art called Celestial Reduction by Marijana Tadic, and because of where the sun was I was able to get this shot of the glass "donut" at the top lit up like a miniature sun.

As far as the others go, they were more about repeating shapes than anything else.

The Glenelg jetty in the bottom shot was actually closed off because it was damaged during the wild weather we had at the beginning of the month.

There's no great story behind this week's Random Hotness... in fact, I'm not 100% sure where I got it... I'm guessing somewhere during my travels around random photography websites, since that's where I'd filed it... but other than that, he's just hot and random... and, according to the filename, his name is Dane.

I'm not feeling overly verbose today, or this week in general really, so I figured this one word meme was appropriate. I will say that it's sometimes harder to come up with just one word answers than it is to come up with a three or four word answer.

Muzbot did a version of this recently, but I just noticed that his version has three less questions than this one...

It's no secret that I love me some avatar makers... and now, thanks to the website for The Simpsons Movie I can add my Simpson self to my South Park self... I'm not really sure how accurate an interpretation of me it is... and the hair definitely isn't quite right, but it was probably the best out of the available choices (would it have killed them to come up with something short and spiky, ala Bart's hair?) but it's kinda groovy to be all Simpsonified...

For some time now I've been making a list of some of the stranger search queries that have led people here to yaniblog... for the most part they all seem to have dried up... although now that Big Brother is coming to an end I am getting more than a few BB related searches.

Now, for the record, these are the searches that didn't automatically relate to a particular post I did... If there was something that did, then it didn't make the list... but these are the weird and wonderful searches...

oprah's feet and toes

nate berkus chunky knit throws pattern

what does stylewhore mean?

dark gay male faery, fairies

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pic of women with monkey tattoos

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We didn't really do a big photo safari this week... but since it was such a nice day (see clear blue skies and everything, even if it was only supposedly around 14°C) we figured after we'd done all the usual shopping and whatnot, we'd head down to Glenelg.

There was one quite detour first, into town so that I could drag Ma into Myer and make her look at microwaves since she keeps complaining that she wants a new one, but then never does anything about it (and still didn't since she has too many other bills happening at present)... and while we were there we swung past the fragrance section so that I could ask them about the sidewalk cologne I found while I was working, Joop! What About Adam... and ask I did... only to have the nice ladies tell me that that particular fragrance had been discontinued FIVE YEARS AGO! Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bum... trust me to find a fragrance I really, really like (on the footpath, for free), and then it turns out to be discontinued (and I'm doubley pissy because I think the female version, All About Eve, is still available). They did try and ply me with the new Joop! fragrance, GO... and it didn't smell too bad when it first went on me, but by the end of the afternoon it just smelled like talculm powder... so, not the best smell ever... and now back to the drawing board to find me a fragrance I like...

Anyway, we left town but we didn't go straight down to Glenelg, we actually came at it from a different angle, then came along the beachfront for a while before we got to the Bay.

I pretty much assumed that it wasn't going to be lots with the taking of the photos, because I've done that previously... but we haven't been down there in a while, so it was nice.

Then we played the tourist game again and checked out the Bay Discovery Centre in the old Town Hall, which is actually kinda groovy, since it's all about the history of Glenelg. Okay, we didn't stay very long... and kind of skipped a bunch of stuff, but bits of it were interesting... like the fact that the original jetty was destroyed and when they decided to build a new one they pulled all this stuff off the sea floor... a couple of guns, about a billion teaspoons, glass bottles, you name it.

While we were in there we also found a version of the Public Art Guide that we used last week, but for some of the stuff down at Glenelg... I wonder how many other versions of it there are... so we did wander around a little and snap some pics of bits and pieces of art, although I don't think I ended up with enough shots to make a Montage.

By the time we'd wandered about a bit we were getting peckish, so we did a stroll up and down Jetty Road to see if anything struck our fancy... and alas no... although we did wander into Dymocks to have a look at the new Harry Potter book... since they had this whole "Wizard Money" offer thing (basically two vouchers for $5 off when you spent more than $30, so not really worth it), plus a cute little purple Harry Potter bag for the book to go in... but in the end I decided against it... I'm in the middle of another book series at the moment, then I went to read all the other Harry Potter books again before I read the final one... so even if I did get it now, it would be at least a month and a half before I got to it, and I'm sure that somebody somewhere at some point will ruin whatever surprises there are for me... so instead I'll wait until it comes down in price in a while, and I'll just have to maintain a "Potter News Ban" until I do... so nobody posting spoilers anywhere m'kay!

We didn't end up finding anywhere we wanted to go for lunch, but kind of decided that we were in the mood for fish and chips (a plan that always seems like a good idea when you think of it, but after you've eaten it seems slightly less good somehow)... so we took another drive down the beach to find somewhere nice and ended up at some place called, I think, Fishbait... which supposedly won the "Best Fish and Chips" rating from somewhere. Well, they weren't bad, but I dunno if I would call them the "best".

Now, remind me that when I next get reincarnated, I DO NOT want to come back to life as a seagull... sure, it sounds good... you can fly, you eat like crazy, go get to be loud and obnoxious to all the other seagulls... but there are downsides... like this poor little guy on the right (look very carefully under his tail at the back).

As we finished eating he flew in and landed right next to us and for a second I wasn't sure that I was seeing... but then he turned around and I saw it properly... he was, in essence, a Seagull Pop, or Seagull Satay... Seagull on a Stick... call it what you will... but somehow, at some point, this poor seagull had gotten one of those sharp wooden skewers quite firmly stuck into his little feathered buttocks (hopefully not in any particular orifice, because that would be very bad)... he didn't seem in pain or distressed, or even really to notice that it was there... but I gotta say, seeing a seagull with a skewer sticking out of his butt is one of the oddest things I've seen in a while.

And then just after that we saw another seagull that had NO legs... like none, not even stumps. I'm used to seeing seagulls that are missing a foot, or sometimes a whole leg... but I don't think I've ever seen a double amputee seagull... very, very weird.

After that it was a quick trip to Harbour Town, since we were in the neighbourhood, mostly to check out the discount perfume place and see if they happened to have any of the Adam fragrance... but alas no. To be honest I never quite know why we bother going down to Harbour Town... as a general rule we never really bother getting anything... in fact with the exception of a brief stop to get some frozen yoghurt, I don't know that we really stopped anywhere or looked in more than a couple of stores. But you get that...

Now we have an episode of Doctor Who (yaaaaaay) up soon, maybe throwing together something that vaguely resembles dinner (maybe I'll just make some custard), and then... ummmm... yes...

I love the top shot... so much so actually that I made myself a desktop wallpaper out of it. I think it's part of the Experimental Art Foundation, but I'm not completely sure. It was tucked away in a little walled enclosure, and there were a bunch of different words and phrases stuck to the wall.

The one in the middle is called... *consults handy Public Art Walking Guide brochure*... Eyrie by Bronwyn Oliver... and it's on the wall of the Hyatt Hotel... actually, since the bronze spiral there are three "rocks"... they're a little hard to see in the photo, but they are there...

And the bottom shot is of one of the wordballs from a work called Drift... (the ellipses are the artist's in this case, not mine) by George Popperwell. I love the wordballs... I've photographed them before, and when Ma and I were doing our little safari I think I ended up taking twenty or thirty shots of them... bits of words here, bits of words there... some of the bands make no sense whatsoever, they're gibberish or bits of phrases or whatever... and others, like this one make some degree of sense, but when you read them you kind of go "What the?"... case in point, the band in the middle of the shots says "your bread spread me with your" and I happen to know that the end of that phrase is "with your sweet honey", because when I realised what the first bit was I had to see how it ended.

As I mentioned on Monday, Raury has kind of been on my mind since I found out he passed away last week... and obviously the Universe figured it was time I found out more because things just seem to have been falling into place information-wise...

I already covered the whole "found the forum post about him" thing... but I emailed one of the members, somebody who said that they'd been to his funeral, and found out other bits and pieces.

He passed away on 4 March 2006... ten days before my 32nd birthday in fact (and I just worked out that on the night it happened Ma and I were off seeing Il Cielo che Danza the first time around... huh... weird), and by all accounts the funeral went well, lots of people from different parts of his life all coming together. I do wonder if some of the people who I actually introduced Raury to were there... and if they just figured somebody had told me, or else neglected to tell me on purpose. But I know that thinking that way leads to the crazy, plus I'll probably never ever know anyway, so there's not really much point in dwelling on it.

It also turns out that all the folks from the forum put together a memorial plaque that's now sitting on top of a hill in Falls Creek (and I've seen photos of it, it looks highly fitting)... and that seems to be the only physical memorial to his life, since his dad organised to have his ashes scattered at some point after the funeral and didn't tell anyone (as far as I understand).

But at least there's something somewhere that people can toast appropriately...

I just did the math, and I've actually known Raury for around about twelve years... we first met when he started working part time as a computer instructor for the business college I was working for... and interestingly enough I think my very first memory of him (although obviously not the first time we met) was standing in the doorway of the staffroom and (after checking that the corridor outside was clear in both directions) asking him whether or not he was straight...

He'd just dropped some things in conversation over time that made me wonder, I think the name of a gay bar might have come up, I honestly don't remember, but I figured I'd ask. I wasn't the first or last person ever to ask, but for all intents and purposes he was straight.

After I moved out with Ludo, I think he visited us at one point with his then wife... but after that we lost touch again for a while... but since the Universe likes to play with me, he just turned up on our doorstep one evening towards the end of our lease after Ludo and I had been out looking at possible new apartments to move to... it turned out that one of the apartments that we'd looked at just happened to belong to his new girlfriend. Which was interesting in itself because both Ludo and I had commented on how gorgeous this particular girl was after we left... and then she'd described us well enough to Raury that he realised who it was.

Just weird really...

And through me he ended up meeting two other girlfriends, one of which was Lownee (although, to be honest, he was really just a rebound for her after first go around with Ludo)... and the second was Sheba... actually, neither of those relationships worked out terribly well... obviously just proof that I should stop arranging people's love lives, since it never seems to work.

Anyway...

Once I was living here on my own I ended up seeing a whole lot of Raury... we started doing a weekly thing where we would go out on a Friday night, grab some dinner at Fasta Pasta, then swing by The Parade in Norwood for gelati and a random wander up and down the street before coming back into town to "borrow" some internet time at the place he was working... it's always good when you have the keys and access to the boss's office.

Actually that was the place I got my first website (ahhh, Geocities, those were the days), and first started learning HTML... for which Raury gets a big fat thank you, since where would I be now without all that knowledge.

I probably wouldn't even be online either, since it was Raury who built me my first computer from scratch... literally actually... from bits and pieces he had around the workshop and other bits and pieces that I paid for, we cobbled together my first, rather prehistoric computer and got me signed up to the net. Windows 3.11 even... scary stuff...

He was also my mechanic on my two older cars... he installed the car stereo in my first car so I could actually get FM radio, and fixed up the Beemer on more than one occasion... and mostly just out of the goodness of his heart, because other than parts and the occasional dinner here and there I certainly never paid him.

Actually, we did a lot of stuff around food... there was this great place near me (well, not that great actually, it disappeared overnight because I think they went out of business) that we would go to all the time and just confuse and amuse the waiting staff (we did that pretty much everywhere we went to be honest)... partly because we always got them to make us things that weren't technically on the menu (I always had the vegetarian pasta but got them to add peperoni to it, since none of the sauces with meat had enough vegetables in them), and Raury usually had something involving chili...

Then there was the time we went into this gelati place on Rundle Street and since Raury was somewhat lactose intolerant, he went to ask the guy serving us which of the gelatis didn't have milk in them, but he never got any further through the sentence than "Other than the lemon..." before the guy answered him... so that became a catch phrase for us for a long while...

We were all about the catch phrase actually... we shared a lot as far as pop culture was concerned... not only Buffy (and as the pic that accompanies this post shows, he favourite character was Willow... and then Faith a little too, it was the whole evil and skanky thing) but other general randomness like Dawson's Creek (but only in the early years before it got really stupid) and movies like Hackers and Romeo + Juliet...

So we had a habit of quoting random lines from things at each other, often at inappropriate moments... and one of the slightly more obscure lines was from a short-lived cartoon series called Duckman... the set up line was "Hummana Hummana Howwa" and then the other person's reply went "Either you're babbling, or you just told me in Cherokee that my scrotum was many coloured"... okay, so maybe it was a time/space joke, you just had to have been there...

Then there were Raury's ever present and ongoing schemes for just about everything... usually ideas for starting up some random small business or other... one year it was an idea about getting some teeshirts printed up (although I forget what we were going to print on them... oh wait, I do remember that I wanted one of the designs to be my favourite emoticon... ;)... actually I'm glad we never went anywhere with that idea, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have sold)... then another year it was for a website for all the businesses on The Parade... actually that idea got further than most, partially because he roped additional people in, a graphic designer friend of his and a guy who specialised in web applications... who, interestingly, turned out to be the guy who supplied the content management system for the place I keep working (and who was also at drinks the other night, which is how this whole story got started)... but in the end it just never happened...

I think he did better when he didn't try and involve other people (or maybe just when he wasn't trying to involve me), because he managed to run a couple of small businesses on the side all on his own in later years.

He was also the reason that I started going back out on the gay scene after years of not wanting to... I think we switched from dinner and stealing internet to dinner and dancing... or maybe we skipped the dinner, I don't remember now... I do remember that we went out to Mars and danced like crazy people for hours at a time...

I just remembered... I have Raury's platform shoes in my wardrobe... original, authentic Windsor Smith leather platform shoes in brown and blue-grey leather from, I think, around the year I was born (ie 1974). He didn't fit into them anymore, and I SO wanted a pair of big chunky platform shoes in my size, but we couldn't find anything anywhere, either in boy or girl sizes, so he lent me his platforms... and man, I wore the crap out of them... literally actually... I think they came apart two or three times and I got them glued back together again... I wore them til my feet were killing me and I couldn't even walk properly anymore... but damn if I couldn't dance like crazy in them. In fact I did the Bus Stop on stage with one of the drag queens in them one night... well, me and three or four other punters, but still...

Don't even get me started on the topic of Raury and big shoes... not only was he a fan of them on other people (slightly skanky, vaguely gothic, particularly redheaded female people)... but because he had little girly feet he managed to squash them into more than a few pairs of actual women's shoes... one pair of black platform Fuck Me Boots and a pair of white platform slides which actually looked damn cool the New Years Eve he wore them with pinstripe pants and, I think, a white sleeveless top... too cool.

The later years of the story between Raury and I are all mixed up with the story of Sheba and I, and that's a whole other story by itself, but it's enough to say that while I probably saw him more often after Sheba came into our collective lives, I think I actually saw less of him, if that makes sense... and in some regards I became a third wheel, which is never a fun feeling.

During that time was also the point where Raury took up snowboarding, and after one season where he sent Sheba a postcard from the snow, but not me (and they weren't dating at the time) I gave him crap about it... so the following season (or maybe even later the same season when he went back up to the snow) he sent me a postcard every single day, each one with a single word on it, spelling out a message. I can't actually remember what the message was... I think maybe it was something along the lines of "This time I didn't forget the postcards" (which of course is a paraphrase of the Looney Tunes cartoon line, "This time I didn't forget the gravy")...

And after the breakdown of the relationship between Raury and Sheba, I ended up not really siding with Sheba I guess, but seeing more of her than him for one reason or another... and then, because the Universe never passes up a chance to mess with me, my relationship with Sheba kind of faded away, and I was left with nobody...

As the Harry Potter books get longer and more complicated, they have to cull, truncate and otherwise excise whole chunks of plot and story to make it fit into the two hour plus running time of the movies... which, you know, I expect, but does kind of make Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix seem to go whizzing by at times...

Don't get me wrong, it's a great movie, particularly visually, but it's kind of like seeing the crib notes version... you get the general gist of the story, but a bunch of the finer details get lost, and unless you have read the books you occasionally don't know what the hell is going on.

And I have to say it did feel like that at times... in spots it felt like the story was going at a hundred miles an hour... and then it stopped and dragged a little in between which just seemed twice as odd!

I also got a little confused a couple of times as to whether or not bits of plot that they were skipping over actually appeared in this book or the next one... but I think for the most part I worked it all out eventually.

But like I said, visually it was stunning... from the opening scene with the storm and the Dementors (they had a makeover since the third movie, right?), through the "Army" montage (which were possibly some of my favourite scenes), all the way to the final battle (and how cool did the white vs black "smoke" look!)... the whole thing was beautiful to watch from go to whoa.

Big acting snaps have to go to newcomer Evanna Lynch as Luna "Looney" Lovegood... Luna often bugged me in the book, she was just TOO strange... but somehow Evanna manages to make her sweet at the same time... adorable, yet totally nuts. And Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange had about the right amount of crazy going on too... but then I have a weakness for HBC in pretty much anything.

Like I said about the last movie, it's always good to see all those same actors back in some of the "background" roles (even if some of their characters do take more of a step forward this time around)... and at the same time, some of the others have to take a back seat... and like the last movie it was Snape (for the most part), Malfoy and McGonagall who all seemed to suffer the most. But when you lose a bunch of subplot stuff, that's going to happen, since some of those characters only really get any "screen time" inside those plots.

And I'm still not happy with Michael Gambon's portrayal of Dumbledore... granted he lost some of the "creepy" that marred his performance in the previous film, but I still don't think he was the right choice for the character. Alas, I'm guessing we're pretty much stuck with him through the last two films...

It would have been nice to spend a little more time with some of the new characters, Tonks especially... well, actually, just Tonks really... while she's not quite how I pictured her in the book, she did come out on screen as a very funky character, and I just wish they'd gotten more screen time out of her.

One of the upsides to the movie going at a much faster pace than the book was the fact that I didn't have to put up with the very, very obnoxious Dolores Umbridge character anywhere near as long... although it was almost worse having her as big as life on the screen... after about the first couple of minutes of her appearance I just wanted to reach up and slap the hell out of her (which is what I wanted to do for pretty much the whole book too). Which is just a sign of good acting on the part of Imelda Staunton really. I did read somewhere that they change the pink of her costume as the character gets darker... she starts off in quite light and bright pink, and by the end is wearing a much darker colour... something to watch out for anyway.

I was also happy to see this time around that the special effects folk actually got the Patronus Charm right... visible animals rather than the whimpy white light Harry suffered from...

Actually, the special effects were pretty damn good all around... including them taking footage from all the way back in the first movie and seamlessly integrating a new character into it... very impressive... actually there were quite a few things that got dusted off and reused this time around, special effect wise... the Dementors (although, as I said, I think they got an upgrade), the House Elf (just the base model though, since it was a whole new character), the "liquid metal" effects of two wands in battle, and the "background detail" in the moving paintings around Hogwarts (which was much improved after last time's rather weak effort)... and that's all just off the top of my head. It just made it all feel like one movie universe. As did the fact that they didn't remake the school YET AGAIN (okay, in truth, they've pretty much had the same school sets for the last three movies, but still).

So all in all, not bad... a little high speed at times, but worth seeing...

And I'll leave you with my favourite line of the movie, which belongs to Emma Watson as Hermione... "Ron, just because you have the emotional range of a teaspoon!" Hehehe...

We're now officially staring down the home straight for Big Brother 2007... six housemates left... two weeks to go (which means a double eviction this week, and then another double next week, leaving the final two for the Monday finale)... everything is suddenly starting to wrap up... this Monday was final nominations... I'm not sure if there is one or two Friday Night Live's left...

As I said at some earlier point, this has been such a BLAND year... whether it's because there was no "Adults Only" show... or because this particular crop of housemates were so damn vanilla... or because Big Brother crushed the spirit out of them in the first couple of weeks and turned them into rule obeying little robots or what, I dunno...

And unlike other years, I've been able to accurately predict each and every eviction... it hasn't always been the people I've wanted to be booted out, but it's been the people I've expected... which is kind of boring too...

Since we are down to the final six, I thought I might just have a little ramble about each of the finalists, see if I can make some predictions about the winner...

AleishaOriginally, because of her close association with Bitchqueen Emma I really didn't like Aleisha very much... but after Emma left she did start to grow on me, and now she's probably up in my top three favourites (being her, Billy and Zach for the record). I'm pretty sure she's going to be sitting on the couch come the final Monday, but I think she's going to end up as the runner up.

BillyAgain, because of the link he had with both Bratty Bodie and Bitchqueen Emma I was never particularly fond of Billy at the start... granted he's pretty damn hot, what with the floppy blonde hair and the low riding pants and whatnot... but again, once the "bad" influences left the house I warmed up to him. I would like to think he'd end up as the eventual winner, but I'm not completely sure... I would say that he'll end up in the final four though.

JoelUrgh! Former Housemate Nick was right about Joel... he's just not funny... at least not from what they've shown of him on the shows... and he also hasn't shown me anything about himself in the footage I've seen... there's nothing of depth there and what is there is all front and fairyfloss. I would hope that he gets thrown out this weekend in the double, but I'm not completely sure that's going to happen, but I don't think he'll make the final two.

TravisWill somebody just gag him please!? I'm not disputing that he's a great guy... because he definitely seems to be... a good father, and all-round good Aussie bloke... but he just NEVER SHUTS UP! Even when Big Brother is giving them instructions, he still feels the need to say "Okay", or "No way", or the ever present "You're joking!"... shut up already Travis! I said in the very first BB post for this year that he was the Housemate Who Shouldn't Speak Ever... and I totally stand by that. I also don't want him to win. It's not really anything personal (well, other than the fact he needs to shut up and stop putting 'O' on the end of every single word), but he's the same guy now as he was when he went into the house... in fact you could drop a house on him and he'd still be the same guy. I want more change, more dimension in my winner than that thank you.

ZachOkay, so I was possibly a little evil about Zach when he first went into the house... although I do still stand behind my GAYEST! HOUSEMATE! EVER! comment... and I retract that whole statement about the "solo porn career" (although I'm not discounting slightly inappropriate Gaydar profile images, but you would have thought they would have surfaced already). He's somewhat of a sweetheart, although the massive indecision thing he has going I could live without, and in a perfect world he could have a shot at not only being the first gay winner of Big Brother, but also the first Intruder winner. Alas, I think he will possibly be knocked out of the final four. Would be nice though.

ZoranI go back and forth on Zoran to be honest... I think he adds some good value to the house, but I just don't see him winning. Actually, having taken a look at the poll on the BB website, I think his number may just be up this coming weekend, since he has about half of the votes in the "Who will you evict" poll currently. Personally I'd like to see him survive this weekend and make it through, but somehow I don't think that's going to happen.

So yeah... to sum up, I'm thinking that the final four will be Aleisha, Billy, Travis and Zach, and then the final two will hopefully be Aleisha and Billy, with Billy the eventual winner... although maybe I shouldn't wish for that too hard, because of all the previous final twos, the person I want to win is never the one who does...

Of course, first off we have a nice new Monday Montage from the Art Safari on Saturday... like I said, it was a little dull and cloudy, but there were some halfway decent shots in amongst them...

While I was out on my walk this morning I happened to hear a remix (or possibly the original, I forget now) of a dance track that set off a bunch of memories of Raury after finding out on Friday that he'd passed away... and figured that at some point this week I needed to bang out a "thoughts" post about him... so when I got home I did a different search from some of the other ones I've done in the past and actually found a big long post on one of the forum's he frequented that was basically everyone who'd known him there saying goodbye and whatnot... I ended up reading the whole things, having a bit of a cry a couple of times... etc, etc. But I'll blab more about that later in the week...

It did mean that I was running waaaaaay late for having a shower, and when I finally decided it was time to get my butt into gear, I went into the kitchen to put my cereal bowl in the sink and run some water in it... turned on the hot water... *trickle trickle trickle*... turned on the cold water... *trickle trickle trickle*... lovely! Then, grumbling to myself, I opened the curtains... well, one curtain actually, and saw the younger, slightly cute plumbing boy standing out in the yard by the shut off valve for the water mains.... "Ah-HA!"... plumbers plumbing... hence no water. I threw some jeans on and stuck my head out the door to ask him how long the water was going to be out... but it turned out he had no freakin idea, having only just rocked up (I think, well there were two vans out there, so it's possible).

I asked him if Stupid Landlord Man had asked them to take a look at my lukewarmer water heater, but again, vaguely docile... and they still haven't wandered back there to do anything, so we'll see I guess.

And of course, on top of all that I really need to go out to the supermarket to get some things, and you just know as soon as I do they're going to come knocking on my door about the hot water, and I won't be there... *mutters*